East Cleveland merchants see their city's merger with Cleveland as the only solution: Phillip Morris

An excavator knocks down an apartment building on Superior Avenue in East Cleveland in September after Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland teamed with the Cuyahoga Land Bank to demolish a series of vacant, abandoned apartment buildings and clear the way for new development.Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer

Chester Tucker was making a point about the City of East Cleveland and its possible merger with Cleveland Tuesday morning. He illustrated the point by telling a story about an old farm dog and a bale of hay.

“So the dog wouldn’t let the cow get near the hay. He guarded it with his life. Every time the cow made a move toward the hay, the dog would growl and act like he was about to attack.”

“The dog didn’t have any use for the hay because dogs don’t eat hay. But he wasn’t going to let the cow eat it either.”

“That’s the city of East Cleveland. You have a few noisy people trying to protect a bale of hay that they can’t do anything with. But if they have their way, they’re not going to let the cow (the city of Cleveland) do anything useful with the hay either.”

Tucker, who opened up the Columbo Room, a bar/restaurant in East Cleveland 36 years ago, sees a merger with Cleveland as East Cleveland’s last chance for survival. And, of course, he’s absolutely right.

“People just don’t want to come to East Cleveland if they don’t have to. They don’t feel that it is safe. Unfortunately, there is some truth to that. Clearly, something has to change. The merger is an idea that can and should work,” Tucker said from a booth in the back of his restaurant.

Stan Soble, the last remaining florist in East Cleveland, and Tucker’s former colleague on the East Cleveland library board, shook his head in agreement as Tucker spoke. Both East Cleveland businessmen believe that a merger with Cleveland is critical, but are concerned that the idea may prove difficult to win popular support in the city with a population that now stands at just under 18,000 people.

As long as people continue to marry, die, or say, “I’m sorry,” with flowers, business will continue to be good for Soble, who graduated from Shaw High School in 1965. But the same hardly can be said for his hometown, which is the poorest and, some argue, one of the mostly poorly managed cities in the state.

Without the resources and management structure of Cleveland, Soble said he fears that it will be just a short matter of time before he will be forced to send a funeral wreath to the city that he continues to love and support.

“The people of East Cleveland deserve better. We can’t continue to live like this.”

Last month, Ohio Auditor David Yost stated the city’s precarious position about as bluntly as possible. He said the city’s handling of its finances was “unsustainable and irresponsible.” He suggested that at its current rate, bankruptcy was in the city's short-term future, a disaster that has never befallen an Ohio city before. An audit of 2012, showed that the city ended the year with nearly $5 million dollars in operating losses.

So why hasn’t a merger already happened? Why aren’t residents of East Cleveland marching through the streets demanding a change in their government – a rescue - much like Cuyahoga County voters in 2009 demanded a change in county governance after the extent of the corruption became clear?

“This may sound funny, but it comes down to pride,” said Tucker.

“We lost Huron Hospital, we lost our post office, we are an impoverished, minority city. People are tired of losing things. They’re trying to hold onto what’s left of an identity.”

“But this city is a shell of itself, and many of the people who are making the most noise, the people who would fight the hardest against a merger, are a minority who have no investment in the city as property owners or even as taxpayers."

East Cleveland is no Detroit. Detroit has assets and is in the process of preparing to sell some of them off to meet its financial obligations. East Cleveland doesn’t have that luxury. That’s why a merger must happen, if the city is to be saved.

East Cleveland still has the GE lighting facility located at Nela Park. That provides a glimmer of hope. But when funeral homes and the last florist are among the brightest lights remaining in the city, it’s time to either pull the plug – or merge.

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